Massimiliano Gallo, iron and fragile commander in the military high school of Minerva

The Netflix series which comes out on September 22nd was filmed in Portici with Capotondi and Maiorino. There are long-standing and multifaceted actors such as Massimiliano Gallo, Cristiana Capotondi and Irene Maiorino. There are promising young people like Ciro Minopoli, Biagio Venditti and Margherita Buoncristiani.

But among the protagonists of the series Minerva - The School directed by Ivan Silvestrini which will be released on Netflix on September 22nd we cannot fail to include the superb palace of Portici which together with Villa Campolieto (for the underground) hosted all the filming, embodied the military high school where this teen drama takes place and today hosted the presentation to the press before the highly anticipated preview of the series in front of the kids at the Giffoni festival. And here among Bourbon splendor, archaeological suggestions from Herculaneum and Pompeii and a wonderful botanical garden Massimiliano Gallo becomes the inflexible commander Achille Giordano, director of a military high school of glorious tradition. "My character - Gallo explains to ANSA - has an iron discipline and believes a lot in traditions, even military ones, because he thinks they help keep order in the school.

So there is also the exploration of what is right and what is not right, if what you are given as a command is something you have to interpret, criticize or go along with regardless". But you shouldn't expect a flat character: "As I often do with the characters I play, I explored their strength but also their fragility, their solidity but also their cracks to give them three-dimensionality. This role thrives on internal conflicts also because your son is one of the students.

And he adds: "I hope it's a series that kids can enjoy because it explores their dreams, their fears. His right-hand man is Irene Maiorino, a former "little girl" from Giffoni who explains how the many films seen here contributed to her decision to become an actress, who plays the major Teresa Bonaiuto. "My challenge was to propose a feminine look that embraces the uniform but with a more modern look and attentive to the sensitivity of young people, almost with a maternal sense".

But what kind of character is she: "I'm strict, I'm not bad, I'd say fair. It is in the name of this ethic that she carries forward that there will be changes. But in this vortex of uniforms (beautiful designed by Oscar winner Massimo Cantini Parrini) there is also a civilian who observes from the outside this world that seems "crazy" to her: she is Cristiana Capotondi, aka the History and Philosophy teacher Laura Canali.

"It's a bit like the public who enters this military school - she explains - where there are ancient and precise rules. My character is perhaps the one who must bring a little doubt regarding some things that we still see happening today within this military school". And then there are the senior cadets (Simone Secce, Giulio Brizzi, Nicole Malaj) and the juniors who arrived with the most diverse motivations and traumatized by the abstinence of the cell phone (you can only use it for a few minutes a day) and as the screenwriter Giovanni Galassi explains in a period of life "in which we often ask ourselves who we are and what we want to do.